1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to collaborative planning.
2. Related Art
Manufacturers and integrators of products typically wish to be able to plan their needs for individual parts and subassemblies, to improve their efficiencies in manufacturing or integration of those parts and subassemblies into a completed product. One technique known in the art for planning is called “supply-chain management”, in which a collaborator (that is, a manufacturer or integrator of products) contacts its trading partners and informs them of requirements for parts and subassemblies. Each trading partner (that is, a party that produces those parts or subassemblies) responds to those requirements, informing the collaborator of those commitments it is able to make, and for when. The collaborator can then determine when and if it is able to produce and deliver the completed product. Close integration between the collaborator and its trading partners can provide an efficient supply-chain and can allow the collaborator to produce and deliver the completed product at reduced cost.
One problem in the known art is that integration is difficult when there are multiple collaborators or there are multiple trading partners. Collaborators would like to aggregate responses from their trading partners, while trading partners would like to aggregate requests from their collaborators. Moreover, often collaborators would like to be able to treat individual trading partners differently, while trading partners would like to treat individual collaborators differently. For just one example, a collaborator might treat a selected trading partner differently because there is a long relationship with that trading partner, or because that trading partner is more reliable than others, or because that trading partner is better at fixing problems that might occur. However, the known art has been generally unable to solve the problem when there are both multiple collaborators and multiple trading partners.
One known method is to provide a public market for collaborators and trading partners to exchange information. In some known methods, an industry standard for communication between collaborators and trading partners can be implemented as part of the public market and integrated with CRM (customer relations management) systems at both collaborators and trading partners. While this method generally achieves the purpose of allowing collaborators and trading partners to exchange information, it suffers from several drawbacks.
A first drawback is that, in general, each collaborator does not want other collaborators to know the collaborator's confidential information. Similarly, each trading partner does not want other trading partners to know the trading partner's confidential information. This confidential information can include the following:                the design of the product        the nature or extent of the collaborator's (or trading partner's) work on that project        the particular counter-parties the collaborator (or trading partner) works with        the pricing or volume the collaborator (or trading partner) extends to its counter-parties        the differences from the industry standard the collaborator (or trading partner) wishes to extend to its counter-parties.        
A second drawback is that, in general, each collaborator (or trading partner) would like to be able to have both an aggregate view, directed to all of its counter-parties (or some designated subset thereof), and a specific view, directed to particular counter-parties (or some designated set thereof).
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a technique for collaborative planning among multiple collaborators and multiple trading partners, that is not subject to drawbacks of the known art.